Clandestine workmen once again outwitted local authorities, sneaking into lot located in a back alley of San Antonio Tlayacapan in the middle of the night to complete the installation of a cell phone tower that was presumably squelched by city hall early last year.
The unauthorized erection of the transmission antennae has become a recurrent headache for the Chapala government which lacks sufficient manpower keep steady guard on every corner of the community and repeatedly gets hounded by irate residents who ardently subscribe to the not-in-my-backyard philosophy.
Meanwhile, tower installation outfits frustrated by the city’s refusal to grant them building permits have learned the ropes of sneaking workmen into sites leased to them by private parties when no one seems to be watching.
In the latest San Antonio incident, wary neighbors did their best to alert city officials when they detected suspicious activity going at the discrete sder. pot tucked behind San Antonio’s Cuauhtemoc kindergarten and a 29-unit condo located around the corner. But it started up at the tail end of the Christmas holidays when city hall operations were running with a skeleton staff. According to police department sources, officers called to the scene around midnight on a Saturday night did not intervene because the workmen were armed with an amparo (injunction order), in addition to being enclosed on private property which is off-limits to cops without a court order.
Mayor Joaquin Huerta was no sooner back in the saddle after his brief leave of absence when two dozen condo residents arrived at his doorstep to demand immediate action. The group reiterated objections to an eyesore that diminishes homeowners’ property values, their concerns that close exposure to microwave frequencies will harm the health of kindergartners studying in the tower’s shadow, and, above all, outrage that the installation company was getting away with breaking the law.
Huerta — who famously scrambled to the top of a metal mast last October to help dismantle cell transmission equipment installed on the Libramiento in similar defiance of a closure order — promised the San Antonio protestors he would take action to get the tower removed by the end of the month. However, that move may now be out of his hands.
Chapala’s legal department director Hermengildo Ortega says that his office was not notified to initiate an administrative procedure to establish legal grounds for demolition, as occurred in the Libramiento case. If the San Antonio tower has already been put into operation, the legality of its permanence could be considered a federal matter beyond the municipality’s jurisdiction.
Ortega does report several significant court victories in the cell tower wars. An amparo suit filed by Centennial TWR Mexico to salvage the Libramiento rigging has been dismissed. And BBG Wireless has lost both an amparo case and an invalidity judgment lodged against the city in the aim of proceeding with its foiled antenna project in Rancho del Oro.
In fact, on the day after the San Antonio folks met with the mayor, police busted five BBG workmen spotted outside the Rancho del Oro site. Brought before municipal judge Roberto Pérez, the men claimed they were only there to remove the company’s materials since installation was a lost cause. The company rep paid off a minimal administrative fine to gain the workers’ release. They were instructed to notify the urban planning office in advance in order to enter the grounds and retrieve the goods in company of a city inspector.